Evander Holyfield is about to confess all. Photograph: Ivan Sekretarev/AP

Evander Holyfield, the 47-year-old very former world heavyweight champion who won't lie down, was scheduled to fight the 41-year-old spring chicken Frans Botha, a similarly reluctant has-been, somewhere in Africa at the weekend for a title of stunning inconsequence. But nobody could give a damn, so they cancelled.

Cruel? Not as cruel as watching two aging pugilists rushing towards middle age, joined in a mutual peace pact disguised as a boxing match.

Evander, though, has another fight on his hands and this one looks like it will get air time. Holyfield and his third wife, Candi, want to tell the world, on television, about their turbulent private life, how he hit her recently and generally has not been the God-fearing, straight-up guy he once wanted the world to believe was the "Real Deal". Does some of this sound familiar?

So, after the tabloids got hold of stories about ructions between them, the couple issued a statement at the weekend, which is the accepted practice when private embarrassment becomes public property, especially when the palatable alternative to an expensive divorce is a lucrative appearance on a syndicated TV programme.

"We are in agreement that we both are moving forward to reach out to meet with Dr Phil one-on-one as we believe he is the one who can help us at this time," they said. "We each admire and respect Dr Phil for his down-to-earth and heartfelt approach in working with couples and relationships in a positive and uplifting way."

Dr Phil is a maverick former psychologist whose TV show is of a piece with the pat-on-the-head schlock pedalled by Oprah Winfrey, who made him famous in the first place. If you can be bothered, it is stuffed away on one of your 999 cable channels.

This is depressing and hilarious, all round. While the battering a professional boxer hands out to his wife clearly is no joke, how can anyone take seriously the peddling of supposedly deep psychological problems in front of a retired shrink and a studio full of drooling ghouls, not to mention those hypnotised stay-at-homes who can't find the remote?

chez Holyfield, he and Candi could barely contain their lust to join the celebrity queue which leads on to redemption, global rediscovery and rebranding, an exercise in commercial crassness made possible only by the willingness of millions of fools to watch it.

The "Verse of the day" on Holyfield's website yesterday was: "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." (1 John, 4:18).

How true. Evander has been so diligent in his pursuit of perfect love down the years he has managed to father 11 children by three different women, driving out fear at a rate that would scare the devil himself.

Evander has always craved a stage, and there is plenty of tape for Holyfield to watch in preparing for his next performance. There was his own recent moving role alongside his old dining companion Mike Tyson on Oprah, for instance. And then, last Friday, there was the public apology to end all public apologies.

Never again, probably, will we witness the rending of a soul the way Tiger Woods did it against the mortician-blue backdrop of a well-guarded room in a golf club in Florida, in front of two cameras, one of which broke down, perhaps under the strain of his surely unrehearsed and mournful gaze. Some, including Geoffrey Beattie in these pages, thought it a "masterful performance". And certainly it was a performance. Tiger took less than 14 minutes to become the undisputed King of Cringe, a man who sold his soul to the company store while wearing one of its ill-fitting shirts.

But, if we must live in a world of illusions, let them be magic ones, not B-movie cameos. Tiger had no reason to say sorry to his wife and children so publicly. That's what gated mansions are for.

Believe it or not, Nike, but most people just wanted to know when Tiger was going to play golf again. The other stuff they knew or didn't much care about. All Tiger did was cover it in schmaltz – just like Evander and Candi are about to do with good old Dr Phil.

Cipriani the Melbourne Rebel now has a cause

At first glance, it seems mad that Danny Cipriani is prepared to sacrifice two years of his stuttering international rugby career to test his talent in Melbourne for the same money he is getting at Wasps. But it is entirely logical when you consider that Martin Johnson has pretty much forced him to do it. At a time when Jonny Wilkinson's deep-rooted conservatism is being exposed and exploited on a regular basis, England needed Cipriani to prove why he would make a viable alternative. He hasn't done it, and Johnson has lost patience with him.

There were flickering reminders of Cipriani's gifts in Wasps' 9-0 win over Saracens on Sunday, provoking the mischievous thought that he might yet embarrass Johnson if he performs like this in the remaining three months of the season. Will Carling reckons Cipriani doesn't care enough about playing for his country. And, in that, he might be no more than representative of a trend in modern sport. But I think he is desperate to play for England.

So desperate, he is prepared to go to the ends of the earth to rediscover what made him such an exciting player only a couple of years ago. Wish him well as we wave him goodbye.

Kieswetter takes advantage of blurred boundaries

Do you care that Craig Kieswetter is the latest carpetbagger from southern Africa to play cricket for England? On one hand, I object strongly to someone arriving in this country with the naked ambition of earning good money as an international athlete and only the thinnest commitment to whatever it is "the cause" has become. But people move with such bewildering regularity in search of better opportunities, or to escape tyranny, it is hard to deny a sportsman that right. Is it that much different from a plumber emigrating to Australia looking for the good life? Cricket is Kieswetter's job and he's not experienced much tyranny. So he's here and he's ours. For better or worse, this is what international sport has become.

Rooney scores again

Wayne Rooney is not the apologetic type. You won't see him in front of a podium in a golf club blathering on about his falling trousers. But, as David Moyes has revealed, Rooney did have the grace to ring him up to say allegations in his book, My Story So Far, about his move from Everton to Old Trafford were wrong. That's class. And so was Moyes in seeking out Rooney to shake his hand last Saturday. But the manager won't half be miffed if Sir Alex Ferguson now comes calling for Jack Rodwell.